Philosophy of Language (text only) 2nd(Second) edition by W. G. Lycan

Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy

by William G. Lycan

Philosophy of A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) [Paperback]William G. Lycan (Author)

Genres: Philosophy, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Academic, Psychology, School

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

William G. Lycan is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was formerly the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor. Since 2011, Lycan is also distinguished visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he continues to research, teach, and advise graduate students.

Reviews

[محمد شکری · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب حاضر از سری کتابهای مقدماتی راتلج در فلسفه است که توسط یکی از فیلسوفان زبان انگلیسی نوشته شده است
خوبی این مجموعه همین است که مقدمه را نه یک استاد ساده، بلکه فردی در طراز فیلسوفان روز به نگارش در آورده است (متافیزیک این مجوعه توسط مایکل لوکس، فلسفه ذهن آن توسط جان هیل، فلسفه علم مجموعه توسط روزنبرگ و فلسفه اخلاق آن بوسیله گنسلر نوشته شده است) و همین سبب شده تا نویسنده با جسارت بیشتر و بیان راحت تر خود به متن وضوح ببخشدو به هر مسئله جزئی نوک نزند

درآمدی بر فلسفه زبان لایکَن، چهار بخش کلی دارد: درباره مرجع، درباره معنا، درباره پراگماتیسم معنایی و کنشهای گفتاری، و درباره استعاره که به نوعی ادامه بخش سوم است

فلسفه زبان برای من نسبت به سایر دسته بندی های فلسفه تحلیلی مثل فلسفه ذهن، معرفت شناسی و متافیزیک تحلیلی (البته به استثنای فلسفه اخلاق و فلسفه سیاسی) عرصه «زنده تر» و «ملموس تر»ی بود و خواندن آن برای من لذت مضاعفی داشت
تنها نکته منفی این کتاب (که البته این هم از معایب نگارش کتاب توسط یک فیلسوف است) تقریر سرسری مواضع مخالف نویسنده و حتی تغییر لحن به طنز است! این کار البته یک کتاب عمومی را شیرین میکند اما گاه شیرینی بیش از حد آدم را میزند!ر
بخش سوم و چهارم برای من اهمیت ویژه ای داشت زیرا من فلسفه زبان را به عنوان دانش پایه حوزه ای که بر آن متمرکزم (هرمنوتیک) میخوانم اما متاسفانه دقیقا همین بخشها، بخصوص بخش آخر (درباره استعاره) از همه گنگ تر بود: معلوم بود که نویسنده این بخش را که با نام «نیمه تاریک» مشخص کرده، جزو حیاتی فلسفه زبان، لا اقل برای طرح مقدماتی آن ندیده است

[Amir · Rating 3 out of 5]

اصلا به عنوان یک کتابی که قرار است "درآمد" باشد مناسب نیست. از خیلی از مباحث که صرفا سرسری عبور می کرد. مسئله دیگه ای هم که کمی آزار دهنده بود، تخفیف دادن نظریاتی توسط نویسنده است که خودش با آن ها همدل نیست.

جناب ضیا موحد این کتاب رو تدریس می‌کردن در کلاس فلسفه تحلیلیشون. به نظرم‌اگر می خواهید برای اولین بار سراغ فلسفه زبان برید، حتما درسگفتار دکتر موحد رو هم درکنارش گوش کنین.

من این کتاب رو با ترجمه مهدی اخوان و مهدی رزاقی خوندم. از نشر علمی فرهنگی. ترجمه های دیگر رو ندیدم اما این ترجمه رو اصلا توصیه نمی کنم. خیلی نچسب بود.

[Marcus Lira]

This was the 2nd time I read this textbook, so I just want to share a random thought:

I couldn't help but chuckle every time William G. Lycan said David Cameron could be the British Prime Minister in a possible world. Turns out, just two years after he published this book, it happened to be true in this very world we live in. Who'd imagine philosophers can be clairvoyants too? :)

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moderately technical and sometimes allusive (several views and concepts are mentioned or sketched out as opposed to thoroughly expounded), but quite comprehensive. Some mildly spicy remarks here and there. There’s a summary and a brief bibliography at the end of each chapter, which is pretty useful.

It might be of interest to undergrads or intrepid laypersons – a superficial knowledge of the field is probably required.

[Iman xodafard]

گاهی فشرده بودن استدلال ها باعث می شود که این کتاب برای نوآموزان فلسفۀ زبان چندان مناسب نباشد. البته اگر کمی وسواس را کنار گذاشته باشیم و پا به پای متن پیش برویم برای فهمیدن استدلال ها تقریبا به مطلب یا مقالۀ دیگری نیاز نخواهیم داشت.

[Yumeko (blushes) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I swear to the god I'm supposed to believe in guys, I'm interested in most things in here but one mysterious way or another my interest died halfway through.
(Pdf ugly me no can care for long `(•-•)` )
Such is the curious act of dnf-ing, which is a swear word I'd argue, if I were a book I wouldn't want that to happen to me.
Edit: nevermind I ended up finishing it, kind of.
It was dull, I will forget the very little ik, but I may use this as resource and for the further reading suggestions. I did like pragmatics though.

[Mohammad Naderi · Rating 4 out of 5]

می توان گفت کتاب خوبی برای شروع فلسفه زبان است اما به آن اشکالی وارد است که اغلب به جنبه های تاریخی مطالب نپرداخته و مستقیم وارد بحث می شود.

[Matthew Adelstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilariously and masterfully details the main disputes in philosophy of language. Very good for a basic introduction for fellow philosophy of language ignoramuses.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lycan's introduction to the philosophy of language is fairly easy to read, but it is also not the most exciting book to pick up. The first third I found to be interesting, but as the book went on I found my attention drifting further and further away.



Of course he covers some of the most important figures in the field; how can you get through a Phi of Language book without referencing Davidson or Searle? Lycan also adds his own opinions into the mix, however, which subtly moves his position forward without hitting the reader in the face with it.



Overall, this is a nice book to pick up for those philosophers who are interested in the subject matter ... but do not want to spend the extensive amount of time it would take to read all of the original works that are laid out more clearly in this text.

[Ali Reda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense book, full of details, trying to cover most of the topics of the philosophy of language from frege to kripke and searle. I liked his straight to the point and logical style. A good but a tiring read.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book to get an overview of what the philosophers are talking about when they discuss language. For the serious reader, the author offers tough questions at the end of each chapter and also offers pointers to further readings. This is not an easy introduction. Below are my reading notes.

# High-level View
### What are the problems we need to solve with the philosophy of language?
- We need to come up with a way to talk about language so that we can solve the foregoing "four puzzles".
- We need to find a way to talk about meaning in a way that explains the "meaning facts".

### What is Denoting?
Similar to referring. Unclear as to the difference, if any.

### What is Referring?
Referring is like pointing to. Referring to something in speech is equivalent to pointing to an object in the real world if the concept we are talking about is concrete.

# Language, Oh Beautiful
- Some Strings of marks or noises are meaningful sentences.
- It is an amazing fact that any normal person can instantly grasp the meaning of even a very long and novel sentence.
- Each meaningful sentence has parts that are themselves meaningful.
- Though initially attractive, the Referential Theory of Meaning faces several compelling objections.

So what is philosophy of language trying to explain? A few things:

- Some strings of marks or noises are meaningful sentences
- Each meaningful sentence has parts that are themselves meaningful
- Each meaningful sentence means something in particular
- Competent speakers are able to understand many sentences without effort and almost instantaneously

In order to explain each one of these things, we need a theory of meaning.

# References
## The Referential Theory of Meaning
This refers to the common sense view that words refers to what they represent in the concrete world. Words stand for other things.

But this is probably overly naive a theory. For instance:

- Some words do not refer to anything concrete (e.g. I saw nobody).
- Some words refer to abstract concepts (e.g. Ralf is fat).
- It is hard to see what is referred to with words like "sake", "behalf", or "dint".
- How about words like "very", "the", "a", "yes"... What do they represent?
- If all words of a sentence all stand for things, then how can they end up making sense? We need words to mark relationships.
- "John Paul" and "the Pope" might stand for the same thing but are understood as different things.

So the Referential Theory is overthrown but perhaps it still makes sense that singular terms (proper names, pronouns, or descriptions) have meaning because they reflect what they describe. In fact, there are four puzzles we need to solve with a theory of descriptions:

1. The problem of apparent reference to non-existents (e.g. the present king of France is bald)
2. Negative existentials (e.g. Pegasus does not exist)
3. Frege's Identity puzzle (e.g. Elizabeth Windsor = present Queen of England)
4. Substitutivity (substituting a description for another with the same referent might make a sentence false)

## Russell's Theory of Descriptions
Russell explained descriptions by explaining that a "the" could actually stand as a shorthand for three assertions. So a subject-predicate sentence like "the author of B was Scotch" could be split up like this:

- At least one person authored B
- At most one person authored B
- Whoever authored B was Scotch

This way of explaining descriptions ingeniously gets around the four previously mentioned puzzles.

Though there are objections to this theory:

- Sentences like "the present king of France is bald" are false according to Russell's theory. According to common sense, they are not false, they are nonsensical: they failed to refer to anything meaningful.
- Replacing descriptions with the Russel triad is not enough. Sentences like "the table is covered with books" use context to make sense.Exploding that sentence into the triad would lead to stating that there exists only one table in the universe. So we need to take context into account somehow...
- Sometimes we use descriptions as tags to refer to something but it turns out we say false things in that description. Other people still understand the meaning of the sentence and the semantic referent is different from the actual referent (Donnellan's objection).
- Anaphoric uses are not explained by the theory. For example, in the sentences "A rabbit appeared in our yard after dinner. The rabbit seemed unconcerned." the Russell triad would imply that there is at most one rabbit but that is not at all clear from the two initial sentences.

## Proper Names
So descriptions are not really singular terms according to Russell, they hide a triad of assertions. But perhaps proper names are singular terms. It turns out proper names are vulnerable to our four puzzles:

- Reference to non-existents: James Moriarty is bald (James is a fictional character)
- Negative existentials: Pegasus does not exist (referring to something that does not exist)
- Frege's puzzle: Samuel Longhorne Clemens = Mark Twain (are the two really equivalent?)
- Substitutivity: Albert believes that Samuel Longhorne Clemens has a pretty funny middle name (cannot replace with Mark Twain and remain true)

Russell's theory states that proper names are not names, they abbreviate descriptions and therefore the four puzzles are done away with in the same manner as with descriptions. Simple. This is called the Name Claim.

Though there are objections to that idea:

- For any proper name, what is the abbreviated description? There could be an infinite number.
- Various people know different things about the same people. So the same proper name could stand for two different descriptions—one for the speaker and one for the hearer.
- If a proper name can stand for multiple descriptions, one of them might make the sentence true while one of them might make the sentence false. This seems wrong.
- A sentence like "Some people do not know that Cicero is Tully" are hard to explain using that theory.

Kripke disagrees that proper names are descriptions and offers a test to see that clearly. In the sentence "X might not have been X", replace X with a description or with a proper name and see what comes out. For instance:

- The president of the US in 1970 might not have been the president of the US in 1970: that is clearly true.
- Nixon might not have been Nixon: that is a strange sentence.

Therefore, the proper name stands for more than the description. Kripke calls that rigidity. No matter what alternative worlds we might hypothesize, proper names seem to always refer to the same entity.

But seeing proper names as rigid does not mean every proper name is Millian (i.e. only refers to its referent; does not contribute anything else to the sentence). For example, "the square root of nine" is rigid but contributes quite a bit more than its referent "3" to the sentence.

Another view on proper names is that they are in fact Millian, tags that are used to refer to their referent. Some arguments for this theory are given in the book. But our four puzzles make this view hardly tenable...

Another view on proper names is that their use is only the last link in a long chain that extends from the "naming ceremony" to the current speaker. If your mother named you Alex and 20 years later a friend of yours calls you by that name, they would only be using that name after a long chain of uses that originated with your mother naming you Alex.

# Theories of Meaning
Theories of meaning must explain the "meaning facts":

- some physical objects are meaningful
- distinct expressions can have the same meaning
- a single expression can have various meanings
- the meaning of one expression can be contained in that of another

The common sense view is that meanings are ideas. They form in the brain and are communicated. So when two expressions have the same meaning, this would mean that they lead to the same thought. But this is hardly tenable:

- what is an idea?
- what kind of thought is expressed by words like "and", "of", or "nonentity"?
- meanings are inter-subjective—thoughts are not

## The Proposition Theory
In this theory, propositions form a logical layer above sentences. So two ambiguous sentences point to the same expression.

This constructed layer helps in telling a story about the meaning facts. It might seem too easy to posit expressions and use those to solve our problems, but that theory does not have many competitors.

## The Use Theory
In this theory meanings are not abstract, they are the result of human behavior in reaction to sentences. Communication is seen as a game with various rules where words can be treated as tokens. Philosophers arguing for this theory need to explain how the language games create meanings where other games like chess do not.

## Grice's Theory
Grice introduces the idea of speaker-meaning: what a speaker is saying depends on context and on mental states. His project is in a way reducing linguistics to psychology. The main theory goes like this:

> (G1) S uttered x intending that A form the belief that P [where A is S’s hearer or audience];
and (G2) S further intended that A recognize S’s original intention [as described in (G1)];
and (G3) S still further intended that A form the belief that P at least partly on the basis of recognizing that original intention.

There are many objections to the theory as it stands. How do we apply the theory to:

- someone talking to themselves: there is no audience to produce a belief
- a student filling out an exam paper: the goal is not to produce a belief in the teacher
- a person speaking the conclusion of an argument: the belief produced should stand on the basis of the previous argument, not the utterance of the conclusion
- a lot of sentences have never been uttered but they still hold clear meanings: is speaker-meaning or an audience necessary to give meaning to a proposition?

## Verificationism
The idea of verificationism is that a sentence is true if it being true would change the course of our future life. A sentence of which the meaning cannot be verified is meaningless. The verification conditions are the future experiences that would show that the sentence is true.

> The Verification Theory was meant to be used, and has been used—even by people who do not accept it in full—as a clarificatory tool. If you are confronted by a sentence that you presume to be meaningful but you do not entirely understand, ask yourself what would tend to show that the sentence was true or that it was false.

Verificationism allows for analytics sentences to be true as they stand because they are true by definition (e.g. no bachelor is married).

Objections:

- Verificationism is said to restrict itself to "cognitive" meaning—it does not explain the meaning of sentences like commands, flattery or questions.
- In order to verify a sentence, do we not have to understand it first? This question makes clear that the Verification Theory is hardly a theory of meaning.
- If the meaning of sentences depends on whether we can find future experiences to make them true or false, what is the meaning of sentences about things we cannot see directly—like electrons or stuff on the news?
- Would the Verification Theory confirm its own principles as meaningful sentences?
- Sentences do not have meanings in themselves. They rely on background information and assumptions. Verifying a sentence can only be done by assuming lots of things.

## Truth-Condition Theories
Here, we substitute verification conditions with truth conditions. These theories see meaning as representation. They explain the meaning facts by analogy with formal logic. If English sentences can be converted into formal logical statements, than we can evaluate their truths easily. This also explains why a finite set of features can create an infinite number of compositional sentences. Syntax and its rules is what stands between English and formal logic.

These theories are open to similar criticisms as verificationism although it can probably defend itself better.

Also, some sentences are difficult to frame into formal logic. And truth value is also dependent on context, time of utterance, referents of pronouns or just context (e.g. "This is a fine red one" only makes sense if we know what "this" is).

# Pragmatics and Speech Acts
## Semantic Pragmatics
> There are always pests like Wittgenstein … reminding us that the very idea of a “sentence type” is a violent abstraction from linguistic reality. When a sentence is uttered, it is invariably uttered in a particular context by a particular speaker for a particular purpose. And this is something that cannot be ignored.

Pragmatics are about taking context into account.

We can try to list all the relevant bits of context that are need to give a sentence a meaning, but these bits are almost limitless (utterance time, reference time, timezone, hemisphere, etc).

## Speech Acts
Speech acts are declaratives we use to do a number of things:

- state a promise (I promise I will…)
- marry two people (I thereby pronounce you…)
- apologize (I apologize for…)
- admit (I admit I was wrong…)

According to J. L. Austin, theories of meanings need to explain how we manage "doing things with words".

## Conversation Complexities
Single conditionals can entail two. In the sentence "if you mow my lawn, I'll give you 10 dollars" it is implied that not mowing the lawn will not achieve the ten dollars.

Also, "and" can imply that the second factor was caused by the other, or at least that it followed the first factor (e.g. "John and Mary fell in love and got married" is perceived as different from "John and Mary got married and fell in love").

### Grice's Maxims For Good Communication
1. Make your contribution to a conversation as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
3. Do not say what you believe to be false.
4. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. [The Maxim of Evidence]
5. Be relevant. [The Maxim of Relevance]
6. Avoid ambiguity.
7. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

These maxims are not only good guides to follow in conversation, but they can also explain how hearers will interpret what a speaker is saying, even if the statement is ironic or ambiguous. In the case of irony of prolixity, the blatant violation of one maxim makes the violation clear to the hearer and the deduction of the speaker meaning easy. Grice even said that metaphors can be explained as a blatant violation of maxim #3.

Objections exist. Some think that maxim-like processing does not occur but rather that humans try to process information efficiently and perhaps as a result end up mimicking adherence to these maxims.

## Metaphors
A lot of everyday talk is metaphorical though philosophers tend to discuss literal meanings. Words like "level" are actually more used sa a metaphor than as their literal meaning. A proper account of meaning must address metaphors.

How do metaphors construct their meaning? How is that meaning conveyed? And how do hearers understand metaphors so readily?

A naive theory would say that metaphors abbreviate similes and that similes can be interpreted as literally true. This is objectionable.

Another theory would invoke a processing apparatus similar to Grice's maxims in order to explain how humans understand metaphors. This is more plausible and it explains how some metaphors can be open-ended (i.e. ambiguous)—when the range of possibilities cannot be pared down to one. This theory denies any metaphysical metaphor meaning.

Other theories start from the idea that most words have multiple meanings and that metaphorical usage is the norm (e.g. "dead duck", "dead heat", "the dead of winter" or "drop of blood", "dropping a friend", "dropping a book").

[Shayan Hamraz · Rating 5 out of 5]

فوق العاده بود. با وجود حجم کمش خیلی پرنکته است و اصلا حاشیه نمیره. همچنین سیر تاریخی فلسفه زبان در قرن بیستم رو خیلی خوب روایت می‌کنه.

[John Reis · Rating 2 out of 5]

2025 review
Another read and a downgrade. This is a lousy introduction to the topic. I get it. The topic is difficult, but except for a longer and somewhat sympathetic discussion of Davidson, he has a low opinion of the discipline and its practitioners. He makes no attempt to encourage readers to enter the discipline. Having never formally studied it, I would like to know more about what philosophy of language can teach us. He does not provide that.


2020 review
I have read this book before. Short sections make it easy to read at lunch. This is a rather unusual introduction. It is not historical. He uses his own names for things. He does not discuss Quine on radical translation.

[Moderated · Rating 5 out of 5]

"That certain kinds of marks and noises have meanings, and that we human beings grasp those meanings without even thinking about it, are very striking facts."

"A widespread idea about meaning is that words and more complex linguistic expressions have their meanings by standing for things in the world. Though commonsensical and at first attractive, this Referential Theory of meaning is fairly easily shown to be inadequate. For one thing, comparatively few words do actually stand for things in the world. For another, if all words were like proper names, serving just to pick out individual things, we would not be able to form grammatical sentences in the first place."

"In virtue of what is any sequence of marks or noises meaningful?"

"Probably the most persistent critic of the Referential Theory is Wittgenstein (1953: Part I). A more systematic Wittgensteinian attack is found in Waismann (1965a: ch. 8)."

"If the Referential Theory of Meaning is false, what theory is true? Any theory of meaning must account for the relevant facts, which we may call “the meaning facts”: that some physical objects are meaningful (at all); that distinct expressions can have the same meaning; that a single expression can have more than one meaning; that the meaning of one expression can be contained in that of another; and more. We tend to talk of “meanings” as individual things.
Meanings have been thought to be particular ideas in people’s minds. But
several objections show that this cannot mean actual thoughts in the minds of particular people at particular times. At best, meanings would have to be more abstract: types of idea that might (or might not) occur in the mind of some being somewhere. Accordingly, meanings have also been taken to be abstract things in themselves, alternately called “propositions.” The sentence “Snow is white” means that snow is white; equally, we may say it “expresses the proposition that” snow is white. Other sentences, even in other languages such as “La neige est blanche” and “Der Schnee ist weiss” express that same proposition, and are therefore synonymous. This Proposition Theory fits the various “meaning facts” well, since “proposition” is essentially another word for “meaning.” But critics have questioned whether it explains the meaning facts satisfactorily, or indeed at all."

"When this book began, the topics of reference and meaning were not separate, because the most common naive idea people have about meaning is that meaning is reference. In chapter 1 we disparaged the commonsensical but untenable Referential Theory of Meaning."

"The Proposition Theory treats sentences and other linguistic items as inert abstract entities whose structure can be studied as if under a microscope. But Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that words and sentences are more like game pieces or tokens, used to make moves in rule-governed conventional social practices. A “meaning” is not an abstract object; meaning is a matter of the role an expression plays in human social behavior. To know the expression’s meaning is just to know how to deploy the expression appropriately in conversational settings.
As we saw in chapter 2, Russell’s habit was to write a sentence on the
blackboard and examine (as he contended) the proposition expressed by the sentence, treating it as an object of interest in itself and trying to discern its structure. Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin argued that this picture of how language works and how it should be studied is completely wrong. Languages and linguistic entities are not bloodless abstract objects that can be studied like specimens under a microscope. Rather, language takes the form of behavior, activity—specifically social practice. Sentences do not have lives of their own. The things we write on blackboards, and the alleged
“propositions” they express, are fairly violent abstractions from the utterings performed by human beings in real-world contexts on particular occasions."

"If meaning itself is mysterious, one way to reduce the mystery is to enter its domain through something with which we are more directly familiar. In order to get a handle on meaning, let us think of it from the receiving end, the grasp of meaning or understanding of linguistic expressions. And in order to understand understanding, let us think of it as the product of our having been taught our language, and as what one learns when one learns a language."

• “Use” theories have it that “meanings” are not abstract objects like propositions; a linguistic expression’s meaning is determined by the expression’s characteristic function in human social behavior. • According to Wittgenstein, linguistic expressions are like game tokens, used to make moves in rule-governed conventional social practices. • Sellars’ version of this idea makes the act of inferring central, and it is the complexity of patterns of inference that allows the “use” theorist to accommodate long, novel sentences.
• “Use” theories face two main obstacles: explaining how language use differs from ordinary conventional rule-governed activities that generate no meaning; and explaining how a sentence can mean that so-and-so.

"H. P. Grice maintained that a linguistic expression has meaning only because it is an expression—not because it “expresses” a proposition, but because it more genuinely and literally expresses some concrete idea or intention of the person who uses it. Grice introduced the idea of “speaker-meaning”: roughly what the speaker in uttering a given sentence on a particular occasion intends to convey to a hearer. Since speakers do not always mean what their sentences standardly mean in the language, Grice distinguished this speaker-meaning from the sentence’s own standard meaning. He offered an elaborate analysis of speaker-meaning in terms of speakers’ intentions, beliefs, and other psychological states, and refined that analysis in the light of many objections. It is generally agreed that some version of the analysis must be right."

consider sarcasm, as when one says “That was a brilliant idea”,
meaning that someone’s idea was very stupid. Here too, we get a divergence between the meaning of the sentence uttered and what the speaker meant in uttering it (since the speaker means precisely the opposite). The moral is that what a speaker means in uttering a given sentence is a slightly different kind of meaning from the sentence’s own meaning. Grice called it “utterer’s meaning”; it is also widely called just “speaker-meaning.”2 Now, let us turn to Grice’s reductive project, the explication of sentence
meaning in psychological terms. It proceeds in two importantly different stages. In the first stage,3 Grice attempts to reduce sentence meaning to speaker-meaning. In the second, he tries to reduce speaker-meaning to a complex of psychological states centering on a type of intention. On the face of it, the first stage is a plausible idea. As Wittgenstein emphasized, it is very strange to think of sentences as having meanings on their own and in the abstract, as opposed to thinking of sentences as having meaning because of what speakers use them to do. It does seem that linguistic expressions have the conventional meanings they do only in virtue of human communicative practices, and that communicative “practices” boil down to sets of individual speakers’ communicative acts. Grice amends that last phrase, focusing on what speakers use sentences to mean, in the sense of what the speakers mean in uttering the sentences when they do utter them. For Grice, a sentence’s meaning is a function of individual speaker-meanings.

The Verification Theory leads to bad or at least highly controversial metaphysics. Recall that a verification condition is a set of experiences. The positivists meant such verifying experiences to be described in a uniform kind of language called an “observation language.” Suppose our “observation language” restricts itself to the vocabulary of subjective sense impressions, as in “I now seem to see a pink rabbit-shaped thing in front of me.” Then it follows from verificationism that any meaningful statement I succeed in making can ultimately only be about my own sense impressions; if solipsism is false, I cannot meaningfully say that it is. And neither can anyone else.

In the 1950s and 1960s, W. V. Quine posed two challenges to the positivists’
philosophy of language. First, he attacked the notion of analyticity (Quine 1953, 1960); that is, he attacked the claim that some sentences are true entirely in virtue of what they mean and not because of any contribution from the extralinguistic world. Quine gives a number of different arguments against analyticity. Some of those are unconvincing. Others are better, and have kept
“analytic” a fairly dirty word ever since, or at least till a recent resurgence.

Quine shares and maintains the positivists’ epistemological bent, and
believes that if linguistic meaning is anything it is a function of evidential support. But his own epistemology differs from the positivists’ in being holistic. There are individual sentences you hold true and sentences you reject as false, but in each case the support for your belief is a complex matter of the evidential relations your sentence bears to many other sentences. Whenever it seems that belief revision is required, you have a wide choice of which beliefs to give up in order to maintain a suitably coherent system (recall Duhem’s point). And there is no belief that is completely immune to revision, no sentence that might not be rejected under pressure from empirical evidence plus a concern for overall coherence. Even apparent truths of logic, such as truths of the form “Either P or not P,” might be abandoned in light of suitably weird phenomena in quantum mechanics. But an analytic sentence would by definition be entirely unresponsive to the world’s input, and so immune to revision. Therefore, there are no analytic sentences.

So far, only one of our theories has managed to shed much light on what actually determines the meanings of particular sentences. The Proposition Theory took sentence meanings and just reified them (made them into objects of a certain kind), without much further comment and without connecting the object thus reified with anyone’s linguistic practices or behavior. Grice attempted to fob off the question into the philosophy of mind by trying to connect sentences with the contents of people’s actual intentions and beliefs, which was not very successful and, more to the point, simply took the intentions’ and beliefs’ contents themselves for granted. As we have seen, the verificationists did better; they offered us a test for the propositional content of any given sentence, that content being (precisely) the sentence’s verification condition. The trouble is that, even if we ignore the Duhem– Quine problem (objection 7 in the previous chapter), the verification test often seems to predict the wrong content (objection 3).

We saw in chapter 1 that the crude Referential Theory was far too simple an idea of the correspondence between words and the world; the truth-condition theorist does not posit so strong or simple-minded a correspondence, since s/he does not contend that all words are names. But the truth-condition theorist is back in the business of mirroring nature, of asking what actual or possible states of affairs does a given target sentence depict or represent.

Pragmatics is specifically about the functioning of language in context. This marks a significant contrast, because syntax and semantics have generally aspired to be contextless. Syntax is about whether a sentence is grammatical or whether a string of words constitutes a grammatical sentence, period. Semantics has always focused on sentence meaning, the meaning of a sentence type in abstraction from any particular use to which the sentence might be put. But there are always pests like Wittgenstein, Strawson, and J. L. Austin reminding us that the very idea of a “sentence type” is a violent abstraction from linguistic reality. When a sentence is uttered, it is invariably uttered in a particular context by a particular speaker for a particular purpose.

Philosophers tend
to think that literal speech is the default and metaphorical utterances are occasional aberrations, made mainly by poets and poets manqué. But the bias is only a bias; sentences are very often used in perfectly ordinary contexts with other than their literal meanings. Indeed, virtually every sentence produced by any human being contains importantly metaphorical or other figurative elements. My use just now of the word “element” was at least in part metaphorical. Or consider the number of times in a day that someone utters the word “level.” “Level” is almost invariably metaphor, unless the speaker is actually talking about a horizontal layering of some physical thing. Nonliteral usage is the rule, not the exception. The letter of the claim that almost every sentence contains figurative elements is widely conceded, because everyone grants that among the literal expressions are many “dead” metaphors; that is, phrases that evolved from what were originally novel metaphors but have turned into idioms or clichés and now mean literally what they used to mean metaphorically. We speak of a river’s “mouth,” but no one in the present century thinks of this as a metaphorical allusion to human or animal mouths. Likewise “inclined to [do such-and-such],” “rich dessert,” “dead microphone,” and, for that matter, “dead metaphor.” Perhaps “level” as in “higher/lower level” is now literal too.
“Level” in “carpenter’s level,” meaning the tool, is certainly dead; there is no other term for that tool, and in a dictionary it would be listed as a separate meaning of the word. However, as has been emphasized by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the
distinction between novel or fresh metaphor and “dead” metaphor is one of smooth degree, not of kind. Fresh metaphors get picked up and become current, and then only very gradually—sometimes over centuries—sicken, harden, and die.

even when we have identified the relevant respects of similarity, they often prove to be themselves metaphorical. Searle gives the example,
“Sally is a block of ice.” How, according to the naive simile theorist, is Sally like a block of ice? Perhaps she is hard and very cold. But not, of course, literally hard or cold; “hard” and “cold” are themselves used metaphorically here. So Sally is only like something that is hard and cold. In what ways? Perhaps she is unyielding, unemotional, and unresponsive. But, Searle points out (p. 107), there is no sense in which blocks of ice are unyielding, unemotional, and unresponsive but many other inanimate things are not. Bonfires too are unyielding, unemotional, and unresponsive; but neither “Sally is like a bonfire” nor “Sally is a bonfire” is metaphorically compatible with the original sentence. The naive simile theorist would have to insist that there is a further underlying literal similarity between cold things and unemotional things. But we are given no evidence for that claim. Searle conjectures that, on the grounds of heaven knows what psychological factors, “people [just do] find the notion of coldness associated in their minds with lack of emotion”

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a brilliant introduction to philosophy of language that will give the reader enough information to understand the philosophy of language but certainly not enough to be an expert. It is aimed at students of philosophy, with a structure of each chapter being an explanation of a language theory, criticisms of the language theory followed by a summary and then questions. For those generally interested in reading philosophy books, it is understandable and comprehensible to an extent; however I found it much easier to understand the parts 2,3 and 4.

Part One of the book I found to be the hardest to read and understand. If you haven't done any learning or reading of logic, it is possible for you to have to read multiple times about the theories. There are quite a few logic equations in the book and for those who have no understanding of logic, it would be hard. Part One focuses on the descriptions themselves rather than the whole of language having meaning. This focuses heavily on the individual sentences with their descriptions holding meaning. The theories looked at included "Definite Descriptions" developed by Bertrand Russell and theories around names. I didn't overly enjoy this section particularly and would have given it a 2 or 3 stars by itself.

Part Two and Three is where the book shifts I think to a much stronger footing. This is where you start getting overall theories of language rather than individual words having meaning. The first theories of language looked at are the Ideational Theories, which is that language starts as theories in the mind and the Propositional theory, that language is based on a series of propositions that are abstract entities. The "Use Theories" of language developed by Wittgenstein is I think one of the strongest theories of language, postulating that language are social tokens and game pieces within society. Grice's "Psychological theories" argues that language is an idea created by the speaker of the language. The Positivists were perhaps the most theorists in that language is only meaningful if it is empirically provable, mathematically or true by definition. Davidson's Truth Condition as a replacement for the Positivists. Kripkean "Possible Worlds" offers theoretical thought experiments that allow language to be true in which a sentence can be true in some but not all of the worlds.

The Pragmatics of Part 3, specifically of Charles Morris is probably one of the most useful theories in that the contextuality of the language determines meaning. Illocutionary force is quite difficult to explain but basically means language has declarative force. Implicative Relations theory is that language has implications that are not stated but implicit in the meaning of what is said. The last part, Part 4 is on metaphor.

This book is a good introductory resource for understanding language and the meaning behind language. I read it in part to better understand the Bible and the philosophical assumptions behind the writing of the Bible and can understand it a bit better. It isn't hermeneutics but still it is a useful guide for understanding the core concepts of meaning in language.

[Koopa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book overviews many strides made in the philosophy of language. But it leaves out a lot of more important content, including skepticism about meaning, the implications of the truth or falsity of many of the positions, and what the upshot of studying the subject at all is supposed to be. I also found many of the objections to the theories presented to be weak, irrelevant, or just missing the point; and many of the theories presented simply fail on empirical grounds, due to either variability or indeterminacy in what people mean with the words they use. This latter point was severely understated, and in general what follows from certain theories being right or wrong simply wasn't spelled out.

[Cesar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple introduction to the philosophy of language in a way which requires minimal background knowledge of formal logic and gives a quick rundown of the history, problems, solutions, and discoveries in the subject along with the relevant figures. There are negligible inaccuracies for certain philosophers but it is largely a satisfactory introduction to the basics of the Philosophy of Language.

[Georgia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Για το είδος του αρκετά καλό βιβλίο, ο συγγραφέας εξηγεί τις θεωρίες όσο πιο απλά γίνεται, ωστόσο μερικά σημεία για μένα ήταν δυσνόητα. Το διάβασα για το Πανεπιστήμιο, αλλά η φιλοσοφία της γλώσσας δεν με ενδιαφέρει σε μεγάλο βαθμό.

[Sam Cherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic text book. Wide ranging, well structured and written very clearly. The summary, further reading and questions given at the end of each chapter are of great value to students. My only complaint is the tiny font!

[Jacqui · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good intro with amusing examples and a thorough bibliography.

Kudos: Chapter summarizing bullet points are consistently helpful and occasionally superb.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

You have to know philosophy of language to get modern philosophy, but you don't have to like it.

[Lulu]

Language

[Faridfakhr · Rating 4 out of 5]

ترجمه محمدامینی بهتره

[Arturo Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como es de esperarse en una introducción, el libro es bastante claro. Me habría gustado tener el libro a la mano cuando cursaba la asignatura de filosofía del lenguaje en la licenciatura, ya que el material no es muy técnico y cubre considerablemente más terreno del que suele cubrirse en clase. Algo que me hubiera gustado ver en el libro (y que no vi) es una discusión más amplia sobre las proposiciones (en particular, sobre el debate proposiciones como conjuntos de mundos posibles vs proposiciones estructuradas, etc.), pero tal vez ése tema pertenezca más a la metafísica que a la filosofía del lenguaje.

[Daniel Gormly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not necessarily the most difficult concepts to grasp, but still dense and incredibly tiring.

Begins with the most intuitive or at least naive concept of direct reference theory of meaning and examines its inadequateness in light of four logical puzzles.

Examines imperatives, declaratives and interrogatives, grunts, synonyms and metaphors. Scrutinises theories for attempting to cover too much and conflating concepts that have substantial grounds for differentiation and others that uncomfortably and glaringly avoid certain concepts. Though perhaps a search for a cohesive explanatory model of language is futile.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a helpful and clear introduction to the topic. From Russel's theory of description, to proposition theory of meaning, Grice's psychological based theory of meaning, verificationism, to theories of pragmatic semantics and metaphor Lycan has an entertaining and clear presentation of major ideas, and objections.

[Mj · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a completely competent introduction to the philosophy of language. If you are interested in the subject, feel free to pick it up (if your professor hasn't already added it to required reading).

[Marcus Lira · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnific introduction to most of the important problems in contemporary philosophy of language (come to think of it, that's the best title this book could ever have)

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another introductory book -- and an excellent one.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear and helpful introduction to the philosophy of language.